News.com.com ran a story/interview with Houlin Zhao yesterday. He's the director of the ITU's Telecommunication Standardization Bureau and was interviewed about the UN's role in Internet governance versuses ICANN which is the closest body to governing the Internet. In my view any kind of Internet governance would be equivalent to governing our conversations, something that only my listeners and myself can govern.

Here are some quotes of his and some commentary/rant:

In my opinion, freedom of speech seems to be a politically sensitive issue. A lot of policy matters are behind it. It's not in ITU's competence, but of course we can make some contributions.

Politically sensitive? It's only sensitive because every government that's ever existed has always tried to take it away piece by piece. You either have it or you don't. And what kind of contribution would ITU make? I doubt it would be the insurance that I can post whatever I damn well please.

But if ICANN, ITU, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) see each other as complementary and try to work together, we don't need to have a special (Internet regulatory) agency to be established.

Excuse me Mr. Zhao, but why must ITU, UNESCO, and WIPO all be involved? The only governance the Internet needs is the allocation of IP addresses, and even that could probably be solved with technology. Everything else could be solved between people and their businesses that choose to sustain and use the Internet.

First we have to understand what the problem is today. Then we can perhaps understand what will happen.

Yes, yes, please tell what the problem is. The only problem I can see is the shortage of IP addresses and a need to create a better domain name system that is much more decentralized. Adding governemnt will only create problems.

People say the Internet flourished because of the absence of government control. I do not agree with this view. I argue that in any country, if the government opposed Internet service, how do you get Internet service? If there are any Internet governance structure changes in the future, I think government rules will be more important and more respected.

Hrm, that must be your communist Chinese upbringing. Answering your question about how does someone get Internet access if the government is opposed to it: you do it yourself and not care what the land's law says. If you want the Internet, you will get the Internet. If government rules get in the way to much Mr. Zhao, people will either work around them or set up their own government free network. Just wait until mesh networking is available on every computer in which any role the government has in the Internet will be completely ineffective, short of a complete ban on the technology.

So in sum, keep the UN, ITU, and any body that feels like they're missing the party away from the Internet! Internet governance by the UN is akin to getting the UN involved in regulating our conversations.